Dreamtime poetry

Art, as I have come to understand, is the means by which the dreamtime is carried across generations. The dreamtime is that from which "we" emerge/d, became something like what passes for self-aware, individually and as a species, some time ago; and, that to which we return, the same. Animals live mostly in the dreamtime. I debate … Continue reading Dreamtime poetry

X-Files

An atheist, materialist, anticapitalist poetry that trusts no one, not even itself? What kind of cultural capital does poetry have? How is that capital distributed and redistributed? And how does the distribution of that capital relate to the distribution or redistribution of any other kind of capital?

Composting

The composting system. Kitchen and soft garden waste in... We get two veg boxes a week. One is from a local organic farm. The other is an "Oddbox" of farm-rescued veg that is surplus to supermarket requirements. We eat a lot of vegetable soup. Rots down And then gets turned into the second chamber... Second … Continue reading Composting

For a new left?

An idea central to my "political philosophy" these days is that Marxism and neoliberalism, while considered antitheses, each grows from European Enlightenment thinking where hierarchy and teleology are both values and organising principles (principles encode values). Each strives to "better" the world through arranging things in orders and directions. "Growth" in wealth is a common … Continue reading For a new left?

Privatisation

Privatisation, the political economic theme of the '80s and '90s, is often discussed in industrial terms. Coal, steel, automobiles, communications, water, and so on. But, I don't hear the term applied to housing. There was a "sell-off" of public housing, but it wasn't spoken of in terms like the sale of our national housing industry. … Continue reading Privatisation

Reflecting on process

Forty years ago I started on a journey that I had been planning for at least a couple of years before that. I wanted to be a poet. I came to Oxford to study language. I liked to say, as a sculptor needs to know how stone cracks, a poet needs to know how language … Continue reading Reflecting on process

Living in instances

Most artists do not inhabit all the instances of their art once they have released the piece in whatever form it may take. Performing writers, poets, monologists inhabit the moments of their performance but not that of each of the audience, who brings all their "stuff" to bear: difficult upbringings, hard money, out of the … Continue reading Living in instances

Ethics and poetry: just a trash bag

I have been re-watching The Good Place and recapitulating reading I did a year or two ago. Warning: suicidality, violence, PTSD Doing bad things and having bad outcomes: selling a cure you know does not work to someone who doesn't need it; phishing attacks on pensions and payments through cold calling, website spoofing, and scam … Continue reading Ethics and poetry: just a trash bag

“You+” Can we get smarter? via http://bit.ly/16Xc7T For cyborg babies’ sake I hope not

I have not the faith in the "Nöosphere, a collective consciousness created by the deepening interaction of human minds" that Jamais Cascio has. I still prefer to rely on Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," in Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York; Routledge, 1991), pp.149-181.